Never Again
by starrrz
Summary: Set before Jimmy's arrival. Thomas hears of the Duke of Crowborough's fall from grace, and pledges he will never make the mistake of falling in love again.


_Crosspost from AO3. :3_

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Thomas wished, sometimes, that he could again be the starry eyed footman who had fallen in love with the Duke of Crowborough.

Not because it had been any great romance, and not because he had been a better person. He had been no innocent, even then, and he had known well enough that the world was a cruel, unforgiving place.

Yet for all that he had hoped. Had flushed at the young Duke's lingering glances, and felt his heart race when his Grace requested his presence.

"Tell me," the Duke - Charles - had said, smiling slyly behind his cigarette, "what is your name?"

"Barrow, Sir," he had breathed. "Thomas Barrow."

That had been about as much as Charles had ever wanted to know about him.

Still he had been foolish, stupid enough to believe the pretty lies Charles had whispered to him, even as his own mind worked feverishly, imagining ways in which he could work the situation to his own advantage.

It had seemed a victory, the first time Charles pushed him to his knees, and he never once complained about the lack of reciprocation, no matter how Charles tormented and teased him.

For he was going to get ahead and make something of himself. He wasn't going to spend all his life bowing to others and still die broken and penniless, like his father. Wasn't going to work his fingers to the bone day after day and still go to bed every night hungry, like his mother.

Charles wrote him letters in his elegant hand which spoke of his eyes and his mouth, and the glint of his hair in the lamplight. Thomas stowed them away, telling himself that they were evidence of Charles' infatuation and that he might use them one day for blackmail.

But he hadn't really believed it, not then, and he had read each page over and over, though he stumbled over the longer words as often as any lovesick chambermaid.

He wept like one too, after Charles tossed the lot of them into the fire like so much rubbish, trying desperately to stifle the sounds as he lay on his thin mattress.

Hope, he realised then, needed to be put aside. It made one weak, made one vulnerable, and he would not lead a life where he hoped endlessly, pathetically, for his love to be returned. He had seen that kind of life well enough for himself, in the bruises on his mother's arm, and the tears she could not keep back, on the nights when his father had been drinking.

Instead he schemed and contrived and plotted. Watched and listened and learned how to always be in the right place, at the right moment. People grew to hate him, fear him, and that was better than being pitied.

It had to be.

At least that was what he told himself when the loneliness threatened to overwhelm him, and what he told himself as he prayed to a God he didn't believe in, surrounded by the stench of the dead and the cries of the dying in the trenches.

Edward understood, in his own way, for he feared nothing more than to be always pitied. To be a helpless invalid forever reliant on the sympathy of others. Thomas wished then, more than ever, that he could be the man he had once been, because his promises sounded too hollow, and his honest respect counted for nothing.

It couldn't have, because he found Edward cold and lifeless, and Thomas didn't know why he wept so bitterly, because it was not as though his faith and his regard could ever have made any difference.

There was no way to ever be that man again, he thought then. The end of the war brought no new order, not for the likes of him, and there was no choice but to remain at Downton, painfully aware that the reality of the situation was not that he was stagnating, but that he was taking a step backwards.

He felt nothing when the news of the scandal eventually reached Yorkshire. The rumours held that the Duke of Crowborough had been careless, foolish, and that his feisty American bride had cared nothing for propriety or keeping up appearances, and had returned home to her family.

Taking Daddy's money with her.

His Lordship said that it was a rum business as Thomas dressed him for dinner, making no allusions to the details, but Thomas knew them well enough anyway. Some other dark haired beau by all accounts, with a charming manner and picture house looks. Not that they would help him now; there would be nobody willing to employ him after this, not in dignified occupation at any rate.

Carson forbade all mention of it below stairs, of course, and few enough of the staff had been at Downton in any case, all those years ago. O'Brien knew, somehow, she always did, and fixed her shrewd eye upon him, fishing for a reaction.

"I should never have suspected it of him," she said, too carefully, and Thomas only took a drag on his cigarette and said,

"He's not the first man to lose his mind over a pretty face. You won't catch me making that mistake."

O'Brien raised an eyebrow but said no more, and Thomas stubbed out his cigarette and made his way back indoors, head held high.

No matter how he might sometimes wish it he would never again be the starry eyed footman he had been in 1910, awed by his surroundings and made a fool by the slightest kindness. He sneered when the maids swooned at the sentimental rags to riches stories of the latest Mary Pickford picture, and he refused to allow himself dreams of being anything other than well enough off he wouldn't starve, and grudgingly respected.

Charles had taught him a valuable lesson, and everything that had happened to him since had only served to reinforce it. He was no idiot, wasn't about to lose what he had been forced to work so hard for.

He would never make the mistake of falling in love again.


End file.
